Here’s how much time and money you save by working remotely

Working remotely means no more expensive commutes, no more costly work uniforms, and no more $15 lunches you end up buying in a rush. Sign us up!

Here’s one more reason to convince your boss to let you work from home — it pays.

Looking at data from job boards and the U.S. Bureau of Labor, SimpleTexting recently calculated how much money U.S. employees save when they forego the drudgery of office life. No more offices mean no more expensive commutes, no more costly work uniforms, and no more $15 lunches you end up buying in a rush. Sign us up!

Survey: Los Angeles and Atlanta save the most money by working remotely

If you work remotely all year long, you will save about $444 per year on average in gas alone. For urban populations that need cars to get around, it makes sense that these city residents would benefit the most from working remotely. Not needing to drive to work would save Atlanta residents about $555 in gas money and Los Angeles employees about $510 annually.

SimpleTexting’s findings back up other research on the financial benefits of telecommuting. When you do not need to commute to work, you are less inclined to pay to eat out for meals. Americans who eat at home spend an average of $6.30 per day on lunch while those who dine out at least twice a week spent $11.14, one national survey found. Those sandwiches and fancy salads may seem like pocket change but they add up — buying just two lunches a week turns into $1,043 a year.

You not only save money on expenses, you also earn more, on average. According to a 2017 FlexJobs and Global Workplace Analytics report, the average telecommuter earns about $4,000 more in salary than office drones.

You get hundreds of hours of your life back

When you get the opportunity to work remotely, you also get the immeasurable value of time. As any extreme commuter knows, traveling to work sucks out time and energy from your day, but it is a more stark number to see the wasted hours of your life tallied up. Employees in San Francisco, for example, save about 270 commute hours by working remotely, while Chicago employees save 294 hours annually. New York City residents reclaim the most time back — 343 hours of their life — by foregoing a daily commute, SimpleTexting found.

Think of all the projects you could be creating with those hours, all the time with your family you could get back by working remotely. These are thoughts that more of us are having. The number of Americans choosing to work from home four to five days a week has spiked from 24% to 31% since 2012.